How to do an HTML book description on Amazon

Every author would like his or her book description to look sharp, enticing and professional. And the only way to do it on Amazon is to add to it the appropriate HTML tags.

Beware though, because regular HTML tags that you might be using in your blog and/or website wouldn’t work. There is slight difference that you need to add to your basic HTML code before submitting it to Amazon. The thing is that Amazon does not recognize the angle brackets that surround the code (‘<’ and ‘>’), so you have to replace them as follows:

‘<’ equals ‘&lt;’

‘>’ equals ‘&gt;’

So, here are some Amazon-adapted tags that you might want to use in your book description:

&lt;i&gt;Your italicized text&lt;/i&gt;

&lt;b&gt;Your bold text&lt;/b&gt;

&lt;u&gt;Your underlined text&lt;/u&gt;

&lt;s&gt;Your strikethrough text&lt;/s&gt;

If you need to use a bulleted list, you will use the tag ‘ul’ and ‘li’

‘ul’ marks the beginning and the end of the list, while ‘li’ surrounds every item on the list. So, an example of a bulleted list will look like this (I’ve put them in different colors to make them more visible):

&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;

If you need a numbered list, instead of ‘ul’ tag you will use ‘ol’ tag. Here is the example:

&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;

If you want your list to be indented, you should add the tag ‘blockquote’ before and ‘/blockquote’ after your list. Example:

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;An item of your list&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

Now, I believe, the coolest thing to add is the Orange Heading that matches the headings on Amazon 😉

Tags that Amazon accepts for headings are h1 to h6, where h1 is the largest and h6 is the smallest. The one that is the regular Amazon’s one is the h2 (h1 is very big and black). So, your heading code would look like:

&lt;h2&gt;My Beautiful Orange Heading&lt;/h2&gt;

The coding has to be precise and make sure there are no spaces in it:

• the code itself goes without spaces, for example:

   &lt;blockquote&gt;

• there are no spaces between two tags of the code:

  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;

• no spaces between the code and your text:

&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Chapter One&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;

If you want to use pictures in your book description, you will need to upload them first to a server (it can be your website, for example). Then, you need to decide where you picture will be placed (right, left or center). The tag for the placement is ‘align=”center” ‘ or ‘align=”right” ‘ or ‘align=”left” ‘

So, let’s say, we need a picture on the left. The sourcing code for it will look like:

&lt;img src=”http://your website URL/some directory/yourpicture.jpg” align=”left”&gt;

A piece of advice for the pictures: add a white border around them, otherwise the text bumps into them and it looks ugly.

And finally, when your new book description goes live, don’t forget to check it out, to make sure everything is OK. Good luck ! 😉

 

Kateryna Kei, Author of Raven Boy, adventure and romance young-adult saga